Seeds, Birthday & Sunglasses Cheese

As I am gearing up for planting the veggie garden,  I noticed that I have so many seeds left over from the past 6 years.  It's not good to plant those old seeds, they probably won't sprout.  I'm springing for a new batch of seeds this year!  I dumped almost all of the old ones into the sensory bin for the kids to play with.  I also gave them the seed envelopes with seeds inside so they can look at the seeds and see what they would grow into.  That feels better than throwing the seeds out.

We celebrated a birthday yesterday!  I LOVE his happy face!!

*Make a wish!*

Aren't birthdays the best?  We skip preschool every time we have a birthday party.

Since we have had so many birthdays this month, I tried to have something different for the kids to play with at each party.  This time we used the punching balloons.  They are always a hit!

We tried to blow on the blower, punch the balloon, AND dance all at the same time.  It's pretty difficult!

Another successful delivery of Legos!  He spent some time building. :)

Outside we all went, it was a beautiful day.  Remember, the car toy holds caterpillars and snails that the kids have been taking care of.  She immediately plopped down next to them like a momma, guarding her creatures.  

I cannot contain my excitement about this clematis.  It is full of buds this year- it took it 3 years to get comfortable.  They will be big beautiful white flowers.

We finally took apart the garden box and added some stone blocks to support the Allium.  Phew!

Last, but not least, the best sunglasses "cheese" I have ever seen. 

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Every Birthday Is Special

It is birthday month at Henle House!  We celebrate THREE birthdays in April, boy have we been busy!  It's important that each child feels special every day, but especially on his or her birthday celebration day.  The birthday girl was our line leader.  The birthday girl chooses the music.  Even if it's the 'Frozen' soundtrack, I play it loudly.  My enthusiasm for birthday after birthday is always the same- it makes the kids feel so happy!

She loved being sung to!  She was giving us a "cha cha cha" in the right places. 

Make a wish!

No Birthday song by the Beatles this time.  She chose 'Let It Go', and we all just let it go.

I still can't believe that she is five!  I attended her baby shower.  Crazy!!

She's graduating from preschool and going on to kindergarten.  

Another surprise: Legos!  Because girls can be engineers, too.  Question though- WHY on earth does the Lego company package such a small amount of Legos in such a GIANT container?  Why?  200 Legos looks like only a few Legos banging around in the GIANT tub.  (Kind of disappointing.)

She sat down and built herself a robot.  Perfect!

We are having another birthday party today!  We are also looking forward to mid 70s temps.

"Play with me."  Smudge begged Chippy.  She did not obey.

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥

"Remember The Storm?"

We will never EVER forget the storm.  It was the BIG storm that happened while we were walking to the bus stop.  CRAZY winds that broke and bent an umbrella out of shape.  It stole an umbrella, too!  We were soaking wet and crying by the time we made it back to Henle House.  The kids bring it up every time the wind blows.  "Remember the storm?"  I DO remember it, it was incredible!!!  We created some spring umbrellas for art yesterday.  I love it so much that this umbrella above was being stolen by the wind because of the storm.  How brilliant!  

I had these pieces cut out ahead of time.

They glued the pieces to the paper and worked on creating bright colorful umbrellas.

They love oil pastels.  I do, too. 

They added rain drops, and we added glitter glue streams of rain.

They each created their own version of May flowers.  We need April showers in order to have May flowers.

Gorgeous!

"Remember the storm?"  

The kids were keeping a secret from me for several days.  I was cutting a small colony of tent caterpillars out of the apple tree and explained to the kids why they are bad for the tree.  They are all aware of the creatures that are bad for the gardens.  Because of my explaining about the bad caterpillars who needed to go away, they began keeping a secret because they thought I would take it away.  I discovered they had been harboring a habitat of snails and caterpillars in the car toy.  The worried looks of horror that were on their little faces was priceless and I didn't have my camera.  To their surprise, I did NOT kill the caterpillars.  They are NOT tent caterpillars.  I did, however, let the kids know that it is important that they feed their little pets fresh leaves every day or they will all die in there.  I wish I had a tank for them to keep critters in.

The kids are doing a great job caring for their little pets.

Oh my goodness, look who is FIVE years old today!! I remember when she was born, and now she is talking about Kindergarten.  My, time flies.

Birthday day today!

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥

How Many Drops Of Water?

 I purchased some plastic droppers HERE at Discount School Supply.  There are many things that we can use these for.  Yesterday we did a small experiment.  How many drops of water will fit onto each coin?

I created a simple chart to document the number of drops.  Everyone could guess, and then we would count together and see what the final result was.

Each child had a tray, a plastic dropper, two small cups of water, a quarter, dime, nickel and penny.

"Cheeese!"  

First things first: the kids needed to learn how to use the droppers.  Squeeze the bulb at the top, place the tip in water, release.  Don't have a dropper but still want to play?  You could use a straw or an old medicine dispenser. 

This is what it looks like as we began to count the drops that would actually fit onto a coin.

We were all surprised just how many would actually fit!  54 drops fit on a quarter!!

This is what happened when we dropped #55 onto it.

The kids were hooked.  They played with all of it for a long time.

We didn't fill out the chart completely, but were still surprised by the difference between our guesses and the actual number of drops each coin held.

"Ok, it's time for us to go outside.  The sun is shining!"

I was met with "Aaaaw, I still wanna play with this."

We brought it outside.

This was so simple, yet so entertaining.  You could add other items to spice it up.  I think the coin is unique in that it has ridges, so holds water easily.

The apple tree is blossoming for the first time since it was pruned two years ago.

Another fun thing that kept someone busy: I had a corn cob for Chippy that would not slide down onto the screw of her feeder.  This young lady worked very hard to remove all of the corn from that cob so she could place it up on the feeder for Chippy to eat.  

We are all very happy to see the sunshine again this morning!  It's funny because we have an umbrella and rain art planned for today.

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

Blowing Dandelion Seeds/ Fuse Beads & Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

The dandelion seeds are plentiful!  We snagged a few along the way to the bus stop yesterday and did what came natural, blew them away.  

There is something magical about watching the seeds float away looking like tiny umbrellas.

Pick, blow them away, and find another one.  No wonder we have so many dandelion plants growing everywhere!  It's sort of a childhood right of passage, though.

We got out the fuse beads.  It's been a while because this project takes a long time.  The kids have to be able to work diligently for at least half an hour to complete a fuse bead project.  I thought these girls might be able to handle it. 

The idea is to create a scene using the colored beads.  The beads have to be touching each other in order for them to fuse correctly. 

It's pretty labor intensive.  If the table gets bumped, the whole project could bump with it, ruining all of the hard work.  They were very careful!  

When they were satisfied with the amount of beads they had placed onto the boards, I carefully brought the boards to the kitchen.  The clothing iron was ready.  Just place some parchment paper (wax paper will work) over the top of the beads and iron until they are fused together.  It only takes a couple of minutes per side.

See how they look a little bit melted together?  Time to flip it over to iron the other side.

Flip, remove the board, cover with parchment paper and iron.

Now the creations are permanently fused.  They are hot at first, so set it aside to cool before giving it to the kids. 

I felt like baking a pie for Adam.  We didn't have rhubarb, so we hopped into the van for a 5 minute grocery store trip.  The kids like to go, no matter where.  We call it an adventure.

I got the recipe from my mother-in-law, and it's one of my favorites.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Above is the recipe that I like to use for pie crust.  I like it because it's thin and flaky. 

You will need:

1 1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

2 cups sliced or chopped rhubarb

2 cups strawberries, sliced 

2 tbsp butter

*Mix the sugar and flour together.  Set aside.

*Slice strawberries and rhubarb, mix together.  

*Pour half of the fruit into the pie crusted plate

*Pour half of the sugar flour mixture over berries

*Repeat until berries and flour mixture are all added.

Dot with butter, cover with pie dough.

Slit top crust, sprinkle with sugar.  Cover the edge of the pie crust with tinfoil and bake at 425 degrees for 35 minutes.  Remove tinfoil, bake for 15 minutes more.  Enjoy!

I love pie cold, right out of the fridge.  This one pairs well with vanilla ice cream when it's still warm.

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥